Last week, in Yellow Insights, we were lucky enough to welcome Abdeali, the founder of My Door Keeper. He started by explaining the meaning of his name: Abde means follower, so Abdeali means a follower of Ali.
He is very business-minded yet easy to talk to. Hence, he was the best person to enlighten us about the power of communication in an organisation, especially in a remote environment, as we have in Yellow Slice. The physical distance shouldn’t interfere with our work; if it does, there are ways to handle it.
Abdeali went on to share his amazing journey, how, as a not-so-studious kid, he carved out his way in the professional world. In 2008, after the world was in shock because of the global crisis of Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, his dad was deported back to Mumbai from Dubai.
He couldn’t get admission in any of the colleges, so he settled for an English-Marathi-medium college. As a hardworking person who wasn’t inclined towards academic education, he started working early after his 11th standard.
First Save by Communication: From Shutdown to $30 Million
Abdeali remembers his first job as a delivery boy in a supermarket with a smile on his face. He then spoke about his various experiences working in different companies. Eventually, he started working for the Goel group of companies based in Mumbai.
He joined them in 2012 in the accounts and finance group, and something happened in 2016 that changed his career trajectory. As they say, hardships shape personalities; that’s what happened with Abdeali.
In 2016, his boss asked him to wind up the office because they were not making the expected profits. It was a company of 110 people. Abdeali was tasked with this responsibility because he managed finances and would know best which assets to liquidate and which liabilities to pay first.
So, he had to take over the company’s operations with little knowledge about the field. Given the company’s 12-year legacy, he asked his boss for 90 days for his last attempt to save it.
He declared an open-door policy in his office and asked all the employees to come to him with their suggestions for the company for this last shot. He was amazed to listen to the excellent suggestions everybody had and how opening up communication could help an organisation grow.
He credited the team for his success in saving this doomed company. Employees were not there for money. They knew that the company was on the edge and could shut down anytime. They knew that they only had 90 days and that with everyone brainstorming and speaking their minds, no matter what their designations were or what salary they drew, they could make the company stay.
Abdeali: “After 90 days, we didn’t just save the company; we started hitting milestone after milestone. In 2017, we achieved a revenue of $30 million.
2018, we opened new offices in Romancia, the Philippines, Cyprus, Egypt, and Dubai.”
Importance of Communication in a Remote Environment
Communication is real. Abdeali promised not to impart any bookish knowledge. In the work-from-home culture we have at Yellow Slice, it’s of even more importance. Abdeali right said,
“It becomes difficult to guess what temperament someone is in when all of you are at different locations. What are they dealing with personally, and how is their day going? These things affect employees’ work, but it becomes hard to communicate if you don’t know your colleague’s situation.
Check out his full conversation – https://youtu.be/Eu7eDNQiyfA
After COVID-19, the lines between personal and professional lives got blurry. Earlier, when people came to the office, they tried to bring their best version of themselves. They got ready, packed their lunch, and travelled to the office, which used to put them in a different world that was not personal.
They could decide to keep personal things in their personal space and act confident for those eight hours, even if they had to return to their struggling lives.
“In a remote working culture, you’re probably working in the shorts you wore last night, or you will shower during lunch. This is not the picture that comes to your mind when you think about the best version of yourself.
However, the power of communication can rebuild these boundaries between home and work. Communication is so widely available that we undervalue it. It follows us from cradle to grave. A parent communicates with their child to help them understand how the world functions.
On the other hand, the wars which can result in the death of crores of people can be solved through effective communication between leaders. In my opinion, wars are nothing but a systematic failure of communication.
Look at what’s happening between India and Pakistan right now, we attacked each other’s countries in a series of attacks, and then a table conference headed by Trump resulted in a ceasefire between the two rival nations. That’s the power of communication, real-time, for you to witness.”
How Poor Coordination Led to NASA’s Mission Failure
Everybody studies NASA for its greatness, but Abdeali opened a new world and taught us through its failure.
In 1999, there was a mass climate orbital disaster, and two teams were working on this project: NASA’s team and the outside contractor. They launched the mass orbiter to reach the atmosphere, and it got lost and burned—a major failure, all because of a silly mistake.
The NASA team calculated the trajectory using the Newton unit, while the contractor team used the pound unit. A simple miscommunication resulted in the entire mission’s failure.
How Poor Communication Grounded Jet Airways
Abdeali had one more case study to share with us: the famous downfall of Jet Airways. Once, Jet Airways was a trusted name. However, this started to change when employees at the bottom level panicked, and the management at the top was oblivious to it.
The organisation’s communication was negligible. Jet Airways pilots learned from the news that the flights they were supposed to fly were cancelled, instead of getting emails about the cancelled flights. Management wasn’t transparent about why the flights were on standby or why their salaries were getting delayed.
Abdeali believed that Jet Airways could not have known that its organisation was in such deep trouble. To reach this conclusion, it had to ignore many warnings from within and outside of its organisation.
Miscommunication or insufficient communication within the organisation resulted in a PR disaster on social media and in the news, and the company failed miserably in 2019.
The Communication Mistakes That Sank Byju’s
Byju’s was the fastest-growing, most famous, and most used academic platform. It acquired companies, onboarded thousands of employees and students, and expanded globally. But what went wrong with it, and where?
There was no clear dialogue between the students and the employees at the management level. They started laying off employees via simple emails without any personal conversation.
It was a PR disaster. Investors started withdrawing funds, parents began distrusting Byju’s, teachers were unhappy, offices were demolished, and more.
How To Improve Communication in a Remote Culture
Communication is the glue that binds us together. If big brands can suffer the brunt of a lack of communication, then we are very new to the corporate world.
Let the Doers Drive Decisions
The issue with a work-from-home culture is that management usually drives the team. However, Abdeali suggests that this should not always be the case. The pyramid should be inverted, and the frontline workers/employees should start making suggestions and driving decisions.
The employees are usually from the newer, more advanced, aware, and opinionated generation. They are more attached to the groundwork, so their suggestions are more actionable.
Abdeali was happy that we were already practising this in Yellow Slice. This session was the testament to this fact. Kishor organises these sessions, so the employees can meet people from different aspects of life and develop their perspectives on business.
Working Remotely? Talk More, Assume Less
The physical distance between people increases the scope of assumptions. When managers find nothing wrong with the whole working process, they assume that everything is sailing smoothly.
Abdeali: “No news is good news, is not always the correct response. No update is also an update. A successful project doesn’t define the pulse of your organisation.”
Long-term employees are usually self-motivated. However, new employees or those who have not been in the organisation for a long time can be taught CRM, UI UX design, and other technicalities, but how do you teach company culture? It cannot be infused within them.
Abdeali: How do you inculcate culture within your organisation?
Soumya: We have values that we abide by, like transparency. Whatever happens, good or bad, we try to be transparent about it. For instance, earlier today, I had to put someone on notice period, so we were transparent about it and stated things as they were, without fluff.
Our team is also very young and dynamic. Most of them are in their 20s, so everyone is given a lot of freedom to speak their mind.
Making Abdeali Understand How We Communicate at Yellow Slice
Abdeali: How do you communicate in your office? Do you guys generally try to meet once a year or something?
Soumya: We communicate through Slack and try to keep it relaxed and friendly. And yes, we do annual retreats, where the whole team gets together and spends a few days bonding.
Since most of the team is based in Mumbai and Pune, we try to meet there once every three or six months. If Kishor is travelling to Delhi or another state, we will meet for a get-together.
The Gist of It All
Abdeali said, “I read an article about how Facebook was not able to handle work-from-home employees, and they had to lay off a lot of employees, but I have a feeling that you guys have been managing this pretty well. I would like to congratulate Kishor and the rest of the team for this success.”
